P. G. HAMERTON.*

HAMEETON'S autobiography really deserves the name. It is a careful study of character, detailed even to minuteness, and, as far as we are able to judge, absolutely candid. There is, indeed, something almost scientific in the spirit in which he treats his own past. He is anxious to explain the influences which have made him what he is, and braces himself, in the interests of truth, to tell facts which it would have been far more pleasant to conceal.

Hamerton's childhood was shadowed by a great trouble, the brutality of an intemperate father,—his mother had died within a few days of his birth. He tells the story in a painful detail, which yet, so manifest is the uprightness of his purpose, we cannot censure. Why not omit this part of the story, he asks himself? The thought of telling it had made him post- pone his purpose of writing his autobiography, so distasteful was it. (He did not begin to write till he had reached his fiftieth year.) Because, he answers, "these events were quite the most important of my early boyhood, and have had a most powerful, and in some respects, a disastrous influence over my whole life." Then follows an uncompromising narrative of seven months of torture, ended by the tragic death of the father after an attack of delirium tremens. The child was most unwisely taken to see the dead man before the corpse had been composed. "To this day," he wrote forty years later, "I can never go into a bedroom where the bed has not been made without feeling as if there were a corpse in it." The impression was probably all the stronger from the child's quite unusual precocity. The extract from a diary kept during a Welsh tour is nothing less than astonishing when we remember that the writer was but eight years old. One unhappy consequence of this early promise was that he • PhiLip Gilbert Hamerton. An Autobiography, 1834 53. And a Memoir by h a Wife, 1858-94. Ltndon : Seeley and Co. 1t.97.

was set to Latin—learnt, it must be remembered, out of a Latin grammar—at the ten der age of five. The As in praesenti

and Propria quae maribus, as the writer of this review can testify, were not "Latin without Tears" to an infant of five.

Mr. Hamerton has much that is interesting to tell us about his education. It was framed, of course, as almost all educa-

tion was in those days, on strictly classical lines, but this particular pupil found it possible to diverge. He added

French, music, and drawing, and the study of English literature. Walter Scott (the poems, not the novels), Gold-

smith, Crabbe, Kirke White, Moore's "Irish Melodies," "Paradise Lost," Shakespeare, and the Spectator make up a good library for a boy of ten. At eleven he began to write English verses, and tells us how he dreamt a complete poem which was correct in rhymes and metre. Afterwards matters went on less satisfactorily. A sufficient stimulus was lacking. "At thirteen I was a well-educated boy for my age ; at fifteen or sixteen I had fallen behind." When the time came for going to Oxford, Hamerton, whose active mind had occupied itself prematurely with religious questions, felt himself unable to sign the Thirty-nine Articles, and the plan of a University career had to be abandoned.

The young man's thoughts were turned to literature and art. Literature, it will be observed, comes first, and this was distinctly the place which it retained throughout his life. In his nineteenth year he made his first acquaintance with Mr. Ruskin's works, and came under his general influence. He writes :—

" It was a good influence first in literature, as anything that Mr. Buskin has to say is sure to be well expressed, and after that it was a good influence in directing my attention to certain qualities and beauties in Nature, but in art this influence was not

merely evil, it was disastrous His advice tended directly to encourage the idea that art could be learned from Nature, and that is an immense mistake. Nature does not teach art, or any- thing resembling it; she only provides materials. Art is a pro- duct of the human mind, the slow growth of centuries. If you reject this, and go to Nature, you will have to begin all over again, the objection being that one human life is not long enough for that."

A curious episode of military life followed, Hamerton accepting a commission in the 5th Royal Lancashire. He did not find it as instructive as Gibbon had done before him, and at the time it bored him quite as much. In 1853 he took up his residence in London, and began to study art seriously. A few celebrities, as Rogers (then in his ninety-second year), Ta1forird, "George Eliot," and Richard Doyle, now appear on his pages ; but there is little in the way of anecdote, and scarcely a good story from beginning to end. It was not long before he returned to the country. Loch Awe, with which he had fallen in love two years before, was revisited. On his twenty-first birthday a volume of poems, Isles of Loch Awe, appeared. "Exactly eleven," writes the author, "were sold in the real literary market." Friends and acquaintances at Burnley, where he had been educated, took thirty-six. When reduced in price to half-a-crown three hundred more were sold, and the " remainder " were disposed of at sixpence apiece. The writer of this review has a copy bearing on the title-page "1859" and "Second Thousand," with an "Appendix to the Second Thousand" at the end. Mr. Hamerton's memory must have failed him when he wrote that the original edition was of two thousand. The volume contains sixteen illus- trations. Both they and the verses are of but moderate merit. This somewhat unlucky venture was followed by a visit to Paris, where he made the acquaintance of a M. Gindriez, who had been Prefect of the Doubs under the Republic, but had

resigned his office when the establishment of the Empire became imminent. Three years afterwards M. Gindriez's

eldest daughter became his wife. The story of the engage- ment is told with curious naiveté. He bad proposed marriage to a young lady of Burnley, and had met with a refusal, which seems to have distressed him very little. And then "one morning, when I was writing at my desk, the idea suddenly came, as if somebody had uttered these words in my ear, Why should you remain lonely all your days ? Eugenie Gindriez would be an affectionate and faithful wife to you."

A letter to Paris followed asking whether Mademoiselle Eugenie was engaged. (There had been no communication between the two for three years.) The marriage took place not long afterwards. With it the autobiography ends and the memoir, written by Mrs. Hamerton, begins. It is scarcely less interesting than the narrative which it supplements.

Mr. Hamerton bad taken a house built on an island in Loch Awe, and it was to this that he brought his young bride. She gives a most amusing account of her housekeeping. a business which was anything but easy to the young Parisienne. The island was we know not how many miles from a shop, and she knew nothing or next to nothing of the language. Even more entertaining is the account of the French visitors who came

to enliven their solitude in the second year of their residence. Among them was M. Souverain, a Paris publisher. " Quel pays de Ave ! " exclaimed this gentleman, when he saw his

host's abode. But he went on, "as difficult to find as dream- land." At one time he had despaired of discovering it. Then it had occurred to him to buy a map of Scotland and stick a pin in the spot which he desired to reach. This proved suc- cessful; to his questions he had not been able to get an answer. Why, he could not think. "1 asked,—Quel chemin doit on prendre pour eller chez Monsieur Amertone, dens

l'ile d'Ineestreeneeche sur le lac Ave? That was quite plain, was not it ? Well, they only shook their heads." But, indeed. to M. Sonverain's mind everything seemed unaccountably perplexing. "Why," he said, "do they spell Londres,

London ; Glascow, Glasgow ; and Cantorbery, Canterbury. It is exceedingly puzzling to strangers."

The sojourn at Loch Awe did not lead to any substantial results in art. Its literary outcome was the Painter's Camp in the Highlands, a most decided success, which at once lifted its author to a high rank among the writers of the day. Ic was indeed time for such a success to come. Mr. Hamer- ton's means bad been seriously crippled by adverse circum- stances in England, the cotton famine among them, and there had been a disastrous speculation undertaken for the benefit of M. Gindriez, whose health had begun seriously to fail. Mr. Hamerton behaved throughout with a generosity that was nothing less than chivalric. He had by this time removed to France, in which country he spent the greater part of his married life. Round My House is as delightful a book in its way as the Painter's Camp, and was not less suc- cessful. This belongs to the year 1875. In the interval he had written Etchers and Etching (1868), and had assisted in founding the Portfolio, the first number of which appeared on January let, 1870. It was in the pages of this periodical that R. L. Stevenson appeared for the first time as an author. Here is a vivid little picture of him as the Hamertons first saw him :—

"What a bright, winning youth he was ! what a delightful talker ! there was positively a sort of radiance about him, as if emanating from his genius. We had never seen him before ; we only knew his works, but he seemed like a friend immediately. Listening to his fluent, felicitous talk, his original ideas and veins of thought, was a rare treat, and his keen enjoyment of recovered health and active life was really infectious."

Some interesting letters from him are given, full of life, but always shadowed with death. Browning was another notable correspondent.

Hamerton's pen never ceased to he active, and was always successful. But the results of early hardships began to show themselves, and later years brought troubles of their own. He bore them with manly courage, but they prema- turely exhausted his strength. He was but sixty when the end came. But two hours before he had written in his last book, The Quest of Happiness, a touching aspiration for "a country where justice and right would always surely prevail, where the weak would never be oppressed, nor an honest man incur any penalty for his honesty,—a country where no

animal would be ill-treated or killed, otherwise than in mercy." "1 shall not find," he went on, "such a country in

the world." We may join in his biographer's pious hope that he has "found this ideal country in the unknown world."